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	La fiesta del chivo (Punto de Lectura) Mario Vargas Llosa Punto de Lectura, 2001 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 68 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Blurb in Spanish:
En La Fiesta del Chivo asistimos a un doble retorno. Mientras Urania Cabral visita a su padre en Santo Domingo, volvemos a 1961, cuando la capital dominicana aún se llamaba Ciudad Trujillo. Allí un hombres que no suda tiraniza a tres millones de personas sin saber que se gesta una maquiavélica transición a la democracia. Vargas Llosa, un clásico contemporáneo, relata el fin de una era dando voz, entre otros personajes históricos, al impecable e implacable general Trujillo, apodado el Chivo, y al sosegado y hábil doctor Balaguer (sempiterno presidente de la República Dominicana). Con una precisión difícilmente superables, este peruano universal muestra que política puede consistir en abrirse camino entre cadáveres, y que un ser inocente puede convertirse en un regalo truculento.

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Compelling, disturbing picture of a ruthless dictator and his downfall

Mario Vargas Llosa writes some of the most engaging and compelling prose I've encountered. In this novel, he interweaves several stories surrounding the life and death of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina (known as "the goat"), the dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until 1961. For the first half of the book, he alternates between three narratives. One is a day in the life of an aging Trujillo, still brutally controlling as he gradually loses control of his own body. The second tells the story of a group of revolutionaries who have plotted and prepared to assassinate Trujillo. And the third, the most engaging narrative, follows a middle-aged woman who has returned to the Dominican Republic after a several-decade absence to face her demons regarding a disturbing encounter involving her, her father, and the Goat.

Vargas Llosa's characters are compelling and well developed (in some of the assassins' back stories, I felt they were a little too well developed). The author powerfully captures the spirit of this repressive period, the inner workings of the regime, and the bitterness that followed its fall. The first half is engaging, but the second half really takes off, building to multiple (disturbing) climaxes. This book is not for the faint of heart: in the latter half, I encountered three hauntingly graphic scenes, two of torture and one of a sexual assault. (I'm glad that I read the novel in Spanish; it helped dampen the explicitness.) And yet, these atrocities aren't gratuitous inclusions: from my limited knowledge, they reflect true aspects of a terrible regime and of some of the horrors that go on in parts of today's world.

Another marvelous (but easier and not disturbing) piece of historical fiction regarding this time and place is Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, which tells the story of three freedom fighters and sisters under the Trujillo regime. Also, the Complete Review offers passages from (and links to) several insightful professional reviews of the English translation of La Fiesta del Chivo. I recommend the passages, but don't read the full reviews until after you read the book: several of them include significant spoilers (www.complete-review.com/reviews/vargas/fiestac.htm).

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Power Lust

This is an excellent novel based on actual historical events, the assination of the Domincan Tyrant Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Very well written (I read in Spanish) and well organized. Exposes how senseless and stupid those who worship power can be and all they are willing to give up just to be close to it (power). This one is hard to put down.


Buenisimo

Simplemente una de las mejores obras que he leído en mi vida. Mi conocimiento de la historia de la Republica Dominicana es muy basica, mas eso no fue obstaculo para vivir y sentir esta gran obra. Fabuloso.


Brilliant

Urania, the daughter of one of Trujillo's cronies, returns to her native Santo Domingo after many years of absence. She holds a secret that had prevented her to visit her native country. Vargas Llosa narrates a short period of stagnation and corruption in the Dominican Republic. The Trujillista era is one of infamy and vileness, in which psychopaths and murderers offered the dictator their wives and daughters for orgies and sadistic acts of deflowering in exchange for political favors. Thus the tittle of Chivo--or goat--which denotes the sexual undertones of his parties. In his usual style, the book is undoubtedly more fiction than history, yet it is obvious that the author did ample research on the period. In spite of the repugnance readers may feel toward the fictional characters, Vargas Llosa does not make a direct judgment of this abominable time. The metaphor for the period is revealed when we learn Urania's secret of what happened at "La fiesta del Chivo."

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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